


The Fourteenth Century

by Elsinore_and_Inverness



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst and Feels, Fluff and Angst, Historical References, M/M, Not Really Character Death, Plague, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-16 04:34:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 9,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12335586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsinore_and_Inverness/pseuds/Elsinore_and_Inverness
Summary: An Angel, a Demon and the Crisis of the Late Middle Ages"One of the nice things about time, Crowley always said, was that it was steadily taking him further away from the fourteenth century."





	1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1: 1315-1317

 

He might have gone too far this time*, but it was not in Famine’s nature to think that way. And besides, he was starting to get credit, and that was always exhilarating.

People generally hadn’t figured out the sunspots and eclipses were something that had essentially been set on a timer and left to boil. A few frosts that last too late, a couple blights and seeds that don’t grow no matter how well you tend them… Add in some astronomical phenomena and suddenly the world is ending. Oh, and millions of people dying. That tended to help.

He’d even been trying to get more wealthy people to start taking fast days literally, and among some of the more religious it was catching on.

But this wasn’t the main event, oh no. This wasn’t even the main event of the century.

-

There are a number of advantages to being of heavenly stock. In this instance they primarily included the ability to conjure garments from raw firmament and charm people into accepting you as a member of the nobility. Aziraphale had a number of qualms about the former, and Crowley had never been that great at the latter.  
The angel had taken up residence at a number of monasteries over the past couple centuries, taking care to age through a few decades of middle age at an almost human rate before moving on.

The demon could never be bothered to do anything of the sort. He kept his dark hair almost shoulder-length and every so often endeavoured to grow a fashionable forked beard. There was a hairless patch on his left cheek where he had been hit by an arrow in the Battle of Falkirk and been left with nearly undetectable scar tissue. Had he been human it certainly would have killed him. But Crowley tried to be vain, so he shaved whenever the dictates of fashion allowed for it.  
He also had a peculiar tendency to look at the ground while speaking, or allow a curtain of dark hair to fall in front of his eyes.

As much as Aziraphale wanted to pour over manuscripts in remote monasteries- He had an especial fondness for unilluminated texts- the angel ended up spending a lot of time in cities, instigating moments of rapture and goodwill. After all, there’s only so much you can do to keep a starving serf from stealing from his neighbor. And besides, working at the epicenters of human life was good for the Arrangement. It was almost their three-hundred-year anniversary.

Corruption was easy. Alarmingly easy, so Crowley liked to make it more complicated for himself. The general modus operandi at the time for the officers of Hell was to pick one of the high and mighty, one of the good and the great and chip away at them. Crowley rather thought this missed the point. Why not exploit the natural tendency he had observed of the human race to find solutions that make things worse? Or at least more irritating?

He was good at it. Finding the holes in the fabric of day-to-day life and unraveling them. But he wasn’t a good courtier. He hadn’t been in Hell, and he wasn’t up here either. The difference was up here he could snap his fingers and make the path smoother for himself. He wanted the king to let him stay in the capital? Done. Part of the treasury budget allocated to a monastery near the northern coast? Done.

Despite this, as they was walking along the Rue Mouffetard**, Aziraphale and Crowley were worried. Ethereal beings in general don’t need to eat, but these two were very much in the habit of it, and if they were feeling the effects of what Famine had wrought even in their preternaturally privileged condition, they knew only too well how hard most of the humans on this continent were taking it.

‘What is it this year?’ Crowley asked, kicking a stone with the side of his scaly foot, sending it skipping across the packed dirt road.

‘Everything.’

'It can’t be everything.’

'But it basically is. Wheat, oats, barley, sheep, oxen-’

'What are you going to do?’

'I don’t how much I can do.’ Aziraphale was near the middle of one of his age cycles, a few strands of grey creeping into his curls. If Crowley didn’t know better he would say a few more had shown up over night.

'Is there anything I should-’ the demon bit his lip. He shouldn’t be asking an angel what he should and shouldn’t do in response to Human Events. He was fairly certain of that. 'We’ll ride it out then? See which way the coin falls?’

Aziraphale looked puzzled.

'Like when you bet on a coin toss, you know, when-’

'I don’t hold with betting.’

Crowley looked at the ground in much the same way most people would stare up at the heavens in search of patience***.

 

*Or any of the other times, for that matter

**In a few decades Pollution would get his hands on it, taking the new identity for a spin, and it would be unrecognizable

***In this instance it was not patience he was seeking. Indeed, it was rather more along the lines of 'Satan give me strength to be annoyed with this angel’


	2. 1320

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A visit to the court of Edward of Caernarfon.

‘Where are you taking me?’ Aziraphale laughed. He didn’t laugh like anyone would expect an angel to. It was giggly with a slightly nasal sound.

Crowley smiled 'You’ll like it, I promise.’

'Is that, or is that not, what you told Eve in the Garden?’

'Look, they didn’t exactly give me a script, okay?’

'We’re in England again,’ Aziraphale observed. 'The itinerant court?’

There was a sound of a branch breaking on the other side of the hedgerow and Crowley nimbly dropped to the ground. Even after all these centuries he was comfortable crawling, no matter what form he took.   
He secretly himself away under a gap in the hedge.

Aziraphale stared at him, vaguely baffled. 'What are you doing?’

'King’s coming. Shh.’

Compliantly, if somewhat skeptically, the angel followed him under the hedge.  
'I’m too old for this- Ooh, that’s quite pretty isn’t it?’

The light coming from above made the veins of the leaves stand out darkly against jewel-like green.

'And whose fault is that?’

'God’s?’

'I meant you being old.’

'You’re two days younger than me.’

'Mmm.’ Crowley reached up through the foliage, twisting boughs like a tree snake and brought down a red rose, bending it back until the stem snapped.

'This is a rosebush?’

'It’s the wrong season.’ He pulled down a few more flowers, which had barely been buds a minute earlier. More branches broke on the other side of the hedge, then a dark shadow passed overhead followed by the crackle of hooves hitting gravel.

Crowley shuddered. Aziraphale took the roses out of his hand. 'You okay?’

'Time to move,’ he hissed, rolling sideways out from under the bush.

'Now you’re just showing off.’

Crowley brushed gravel off his clothes.

’D'you what today is?’

'Some kind of feast day?’

'And?’

'I don’t know.’

The demon didn’t say anything, but silently took hold of Aziraphale’s ink-stained hand. They followed the hoof prints up to to the inner gates of the castle.

He made a subtle sign with his other hand as the guard turned towards them.

'My lords! You are most welcome here.’

Crowley thought he heard the angel chiding him under his breath.

‘Two sets of footprints- look-‘

‘Edward of Caernarfon?’

‘And Hugh the Younger.’

‘Are we planning on showing up late?’

‘I usually do, yeah.’


	3. 1320 (cont.)

There was another rider, not so far up the road from the King of England. She rode hard. When she jumped the hedge she cleared the gravel to the grass on the other side, landing lightly. Her auburn hair streamed down her back, almost as red as the bright chestnut coat of her mount. She had just come from an inn where she had had a rather amusing conversation with the landlord over a cup of mead. He had been utterly convinced that the man currently wearing the English crown was a changeling that had been swapped at birth. It was not long before a brawl had broken out. The rider smiled at the memory. She liked Edward. He made all the right mistakes.

–

Aziraphale and Crowley came into the great hall late, when those gathered had mostly left off attending to readings of scripture and devoted their energies to the food laid before them. There were empty seats, as they had known there would be. 

‘Bow,’ Crowley hissed as they entered the room

'Why?’

His slit-pupiled eyes darted in the direction of the king and he bowed with the obsequiousness of one who knows what it means to be punished.

Aziraphale bobbed a half curtesy. 

Edward didn’t look up. He was sharing a plate with Hugh Despenser and not paying much attention to anything else. The queen was glowering across the table at them. The lords sitting to either side of her were watching carefully. 

‘You know, as a general rule,’ Aziraphale said obliviously, ‘I tend to prefer the French cuisine, but there are times when one feels that-’

Lancaster was whispering something in Isabel’s ear. She nodded.  
Crowley skewered a mushroom on the end of his knife and stared at it appreciatively. A champignon cooked in hot broth with saffron, spiced with pepper and cinnamon. 

‘It’s gone too far already.’ Isabel muttered.

‘Like last time?’

‘Looks like it.’

Crowley could feel something stirring, a tension in the air. They’d only barely begun to recover from the last fiasco. He’d hoped they could wait a few months. Or maybe a few decades. Aziraphale offered him a dish of rice.

‘Something’s coming.’

‘You feel it too?’

The angel nodded. ‘I’m afraid we have a long road ahead of us.’

‘What do you mean?’

Aziraphale picked up the object that had been resting on his lap as he ate. A wreath of red and white roses that he had nervously woven together from the flowers pulled out of the hedgerow. There were even places where new leaves and buds were growing. He placed it on Crowley’s head, stark and blood-coloured against his dark hair. 

‘I think it suits you better, angel.’ 

‘Perhaps. Happy anniversary, my dear.’

Crowley smiled with his mouth open* like couldn’t quite remember how people were supposed to smile, and if he did he didn’t quite care and that was just what his face did when he was pleased. Then he looked down at his plate thoughtfully. 

‘We can’t interfere with this can we? We have to leave. Which is a bit of a shame, really. I wanted sweets.’

'They don’t seem to be paying us too much attention.’

'Not yet.’   
—  
Later that evening when War had left off prowling the grounds, she found the great hall empty and deserted. Only the smoke from extinguished hearths danced along the aisles. Walking down the length of the table she found a wreath of white and red roses that had been left on a chair. She picked it up and turned it over in her hands. It transformed from petals to ivory and coral as she examined it. She set it down on the table. Oh yes. This was going to be excellent fun. For ages and ages.

 

*like a snake


	4. Autumn, 1323

‘Crowley! What are you doing!’

The demon spun around to see Aziraphale standing at the edge of the clearing. They were in a wood somewhere in rural Flanders. He snapped his fingers and the small crowd that had been gathered there disappeared. They would find themselves in their homes, or at least each other’s respective homes, probably* slightly disorientated but with a definite sense that there was something they should be doing.

‘Hello, Aziraphale,’ he said evenly.

‘I thought you promised not to interfere with any of my projects.’

‘Any of your projects?’ Crowley kept his voice quiet, but Aziraphale could hear the tone of barely suppressed anger. Like someone had lit a fire under every word.

Aziraphale supposed Crowley could be frightening if he wanted to be, especially if you weren’t a Principality. Watching him now, trembling, with a hint red light sparking behind his golden eyes, the angel wasn’t sure if his friend was going to set the forest ablaze or burst into tears.

‘I have to give people a chance, you see, to be better. They have to have the opportunity to make the right decisions and it doesn’t count unless there’s actually a choice to make the wrong ones. You can’t take that away from them. There are reforms in progress, we’ve been working on-‘

‘Oh yes,’ Crowley said sarcastically, ‘Ineffability. Free will. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? It’s all very well when you’re at the top of the pile. When you’re getting something out of it either way. When it’s not about making it from one day to the next.’

‘You can’t go around inciting rebellions. People are going to get hurt, killed even.’

‘I’m not inciting anything. I’m just pointing them which way to go, giving them a chance. If a bit of corruption comes of it, a bit of unbridled wrath… You have to understand, I’m a demon. I’m literally an instrument of chaos. But this doesn’t make sense to me. There’s no way in Hell, no way on Earth for that matter, that it’s fair for some people to have so much more than other people and then tax them within an inch of their lives just because they got into a squabble with King Phillip the Aesthetically Pleasing.’

‘But just think of the good it would do their souls to-‘

‘To suffer? To wait for reforms that no one actually thinks are going to come? Keep their heads down? Have faith that things will get better after they’ve starved to death? Pray that their children will know heaven before they ever have cause to fear on Earth or one speck of tarnish their souls? The good it will do people to spend their entire lives working for someone else and receive no worldly benefit?’

‘Well, yes…’ Aziraphale squirmed uncomfortably, there was, theoretically, a correlation between salvation and suffering during life, ‘Do we have to have this rebellion- I mean- argument every hundred years? We were getting on so well. All you have to do is-’

‘Stay in my lane? I’m not going to stay in my bloody lane if you’re doddering about trying to get the nobility to pray x amount of times per day, while there are people willing to die to improve their lives and I can give them a fighting chance.’

‘I’m trying to get tithe and lien reforms through without anyone getting hurt. Dying to improve your life doesn’t make any sense.’

‘Neither does waiting around for something that’s not going to happen.’

‘Fine.’

‘Fine.’

They turned around to go their separate ways, Aziraphale in the direction of Ypres, while Crowley slumped against a tree trunk, sinking into a pile of dead leaves.

 

*Crowley got a bit careless sometimes when it came to zapping people places


	5. 1327

Aziraphale, by the Grace of God, Principality and Angel of the Eastern Gate, to his dear

Aziraphale paused and rolled the pen between his fingers. It had been four years and they had perhaps not parted on the most amicable terms. He looked at the last word, printed in small, neat handwriting.

Dear. It was from the Dutch ‘dier’ meaning ‘beloved’, and it was also from the Dutch ‘duur’ meaning ‘expensive.’

to his dear Crowley

Come to think of it, he didn’t exactly know where Crowley was. A provisional peace treaty had been signed in Flanders, and it seemed to be holding for now. Perhaps he had gone back to England? The insurrection stirring since the almost the beginning of the century had come to fruition. The king had been deposed and imprisoned in Berkeley Castle. He had heard rumours that Isabel and Mortimer were considering the wildly unpopular decision of making peace with Scotland. Now that sounded like Crowley’s influence. It made people angry, it stirred up hatred and rivalries among the English nobles, but at the same time-

Aziraphale remembered how Crowley had got the scar he was reminded of every time he tried to grow a beard. He’d been armed with a spear, although he probably would have preferred a sword. Aziraphale certainly would have preferred a sword. English knights had driven off the men-at-arms and the Scots were forced into defensive formation. Then came the rain of arrows, and there was nowhere to hide.

If Aziraphale hadn’t been on hand, deep in negotiations with Edward I (he still wasn’t sure what he was supposed to accomplish on that front, as Edward Longshanks generally made his skin crawl) Crowley certainly would have been stuck in Hell for a few weeks, possibly a few months, filling out paperwork.

He chewed on the end of the pen, thoughtfully. What to write?

Civil war’s started up again in Byzantium. Poland invaded Germany. But Germany started it… I think… I was in Munich last week and now everything’s literally on fire. Everything’s on fire and I am not okay, how are you?

He dragged the pen across this line of text, crossing it out. He’d recently realized that he didn’t have to keep dipping the pen in the inkwell if he kept imagining that there was more ink on the tip of the nib.

I’ve been thinking about the beginning. Wondering how much of this is our fault.

Aziraphale stared at these cramped black lines of text at the top of the sheet of parchment. He suddenly felt rather ill. The letter could wait. He pushed his chair back from the table and reached for a transcribed volume of Guillaume de Machaut. He really was trying to get into modern music.

Einsi m’a fait, ce m’est avis,   
Fortune que ci vous devis.   
Car je soloie estre assevis   
De toute joie.   
Or m’a d’un seul tour si bas mis   
Qu’en grief pleur est mué mon ris.   
Et que tous li biens est remis   
Qu’avoir soloie.


	6. 1336

Crowley was in Edinburgh, walking past the cemetery of St. Cuthbert’s Chapel* at the foot of Castle Rock. It was the third time he had walked past in last hour. He had an appointment to keep, but he was rather hoping the beings he was supposed to meet with had decided not to show up.

He wandered inside the gate, again for the third time in an hour, and nearly tripped over a gravestone.

‘Hail Satan!’ said the gravestone.

‘Er. Afternoon,’ said Crowley.

The gravestone unfolded itself and stood up. ‘You have been in contact with Below, I trust?’

‘Contact? Yes, yes of course. Really… uh, really running up a parchment bill. That stuff’s expensive.’

‘You are lying, Crowley.’

Crowley stared at the ground again, hair falling in front of his eyes. ‘I’ll- be sure to do so momentarily, my lord.’

‘That’s 'your grace’, to you.’

‘Your grace? Really, Dagon?’ Crowley said, brightening, ‘I didn’t know we went in for that sort of thing.’

Dagon made a low, coughing sound. He’d already had enough of Scotland. The damp always seemed to soak into his bones. He couldn’t wait to go home and sit at the edge of a super-charged plasma fire pit. ‘Now, to recount the Deeds of the Day-’

‘Deeds of the Day. Yes, good, well, not good you know, obviously, but-‘

‘I have misled a bishop. He’s decided that a coalition of lords owes him more money than they actually do. Within a month, we shall have him… And most likely the lords as well.’

‘Excellent.’ Crowley said.

‘And your Deeds?’

Crowley drew himself to his full height, ‘I have- and this is quite good- I have arranged for the Scottish fleet to be stationed in the English channel for a fortnight. Just off the coast of Normandy.**’

‘Oh.’ Dagon said. He hadn’t been paying too much attention to what had been happening on Earth, but it sounded impressive. Fleet, stationed, fortnight. Some sort of military administrative thing. Dagon didn’t really care. He just wanted to go home and feel fire licking at his heels once again. Lying in the icy grass for twenty minutes had made his joints ache. ‘Just, uh, keep sending reports and keep up the bad work, you know-‘ Dagon waved a hand vaguely.

‘Au revoir,’ Crowley suggested helpful.

‘Yes, quite.’ Dagon shimmered out of this plane of existence. 

Crowley breathed a sigh of relief. Hastur and Ligur had been no-shows. He hated to think of what they were up to right now, but at least it had nothing to do with him. He didn’t mind Dagon, who was an Underduke, and evidently some kind of record keeper for the business and communications of Hell. That sounded like a dull job, almost as bad as being a scribe. An Underduchy wasn’t worth it, as far as Crowley was concerned.

He missed Aziraphale. He felt like he had a better sense of judgement regarding the repercussions of his actions when the angel was around. He hoped he had made the right choice in calling off Philip’s crusade. Aziraphale would probably say that he hadn’t, of course. But it was different, arguing with what he imagined Aziraphale would say, rather than the angel himself. It had been a long thirteen years since they had last seen each other in person. Thirteen years filled with more crop failures, more wars and rebellions, and far too much Chateau Lafite. They’d gone longer than that in the past, just by accident, but normally it didn’t feel like the world was trying to tear itself apart.

 

*not the current structure, but the one that had been standing on that spot since the eighth century

**an event influential in heightening the tensions between England, and Scotland and France that ultimately led to the outbreak of the Hundred Years War (although that was certainly not what Crowley intended)


	7. 1340

A tavern in London was not one of Aziraphale’s usual haunts, not that what he did could be considered haunting. But it was was where his inquiries after a man with ‘snakeskin shoes’ and yellow eyes had led him. He was afraid to find out how long Crowley had been there.

It smelled terrible. You’d think after over five millennia on Earth, Aziraphale would have gotten used to the olfactory bouquet of human inhabitation. But the horse muck tramped across the floor, the rotting food caught in the rushes spread across the floor and the smell of urine wafting in from where chamber pots had been emptied into the courtyard mingled with the tang of fermenting alcohol to assault his senses. The angel scanned the room. The walls were constructed of wood and waddle and daub and there was a small fire burning in a grate lined with stone. Dozens of intoxicated humans were crowded in a small grubby room. Absolutely all of it seemed like a terrible idea.

In the corner, hunched over the counter, nursing a mug of ale or possibly something stronger, scaly feet kicking at a concerning pile of empty bottles was a familiar face. Curtains of unwashed dark hair fell in front of his eyes, and his midnight-coloured cotehardie with trailing sleeves that might once have been called splendid was now worn and slightly tattered. Crowley had evidently been indulging his nervous habit of pulling the embroidery out of his clothing. Sometimes Aziraphale wondered if that was the reason he had anything embroidered in the first place.

‘Hello,’ the angel said, softly.

Crowley nearly toppled off of his stool. There was red in his eyes again, Aziraphale could see, but this time it looked a lot more like a subconjunctival hemorrhage than a stirring of demonic power.

‘The Flanders of brother Count- the count Flanders of brother… The-’ Crowley’s long tongue darted out briefly and he took another pull on his drink. He didn’t seem to be speaking to anyone in particular.

Aziraphale cleared his throat. ‘Crowley. I was wondering if-‘

‘Gone to the King of France- the King of France- et il est le roi we had before, as before- mais pas toujours, méfiez-vous- for ’tis a war’ Crowley shook his head slowly as he continued babbling about the king of France and the brother of the Count of Flanders.

‘Crowley, can you hear me,’ this was going to be a lot harder than Aziraphale had thought.

‘Hear you…’ Crowley swayed slightly. He couldn’t get his eyes to focus. Demons*, as a general rule, do not become intoxicated past the point of pleasure** or alleviation of care. But Crowley had never put much store by general rules, especially when he was quite sure that something Very Bad had happened that seemed to be His Fault.

‘Yes,’ Aziraphale said, shifting stiffly, wishing he had thought to wear overshoes, 'I was wondering if you had any thoughts regarding the-‘

Crowley lost consciousness, and Aziraphale was only just able to keep him from hitting his head on the counter on the way down.

 

 

*angels, of course, were not supposed to become intoxicated at all, but no one listened to that

**where this delineation is drawn is almost entirely arbitrary, as masochism is far from uncommon among the Legions of Hell


	8. 1340 (cont.)

For a few blissful moments, or possibly hours, everything was blank. Well, almost everything. There was a warm presence near him, bright as a star, and cool linen draped over his eyes. Fragmentary memories drifted across his consciousness. Slithering through long grass, the feeling of touching clouds, of catching an air current under his wings.

He had wings. And plump fingers were presently combing through the feathers. Not always in the right direction. Everyone knew that wasn’t what you were supposed to do with feathers.

Crowley rolled onto his side and reality hit him like a brick.

-

Aziraphale had carried him out of the tavern.

‘I was wondering when that was going to happen,’ the landlord said, nodding at Crowley, ‘changelings, y'see. They’re not like us.’

Aziraphale gave him a truly bewildered look, and fled.

As soon as they were out of sight, he dematerialized both of them and rematerialized in a conveniently empty* manor house somewhere in the countryside.

Aziraphale unlaced the dark cotehardie as he lay the demon on the bed. His undergarments were torn in such a way that suggested he had attempted to climb through a gap in a fence a few days back. Aziraphale could see places where patches of scales broke through his skin like glittering freckles. A changeling indeed. He thought briefly of his own true form, or one of them, anyway. Aziraphale had many forms and who’s to say a plain-ish looking monk was any less 'true’ than a celestial being with dozens of eyes almost the size of a cathedral.

Crowley only had a few forms. There was this, whatever this was**, with and without wings, a serpent, a different kind of serpent that was a bit larger and something like a dragon that sometimes had limbs if God, or Satan or Someone was feeling generous, and something truly awful covered with maggots.

Aziraphale brushed his thumb across the scar near Crowley’s mouth, visible amid the day-old? two-day old? stubble. He could have healed it properly the first time, but then again, so could Crowley after the first couple days.

Crowley opened his eyes. Aziraphale was leaning over him. He looked slightly younger than Crowley now, with fewer wrinkles, the grey banished from his curls. The light filtering through the narrow windows behind him seemed to create a golden corona around him. He almost looked like an angel***.

'Water,’ said Crowley hoarsely.

'Nice to see you too.’

'And make sure you haven’t enchanted it.’

'It’s not called enchanting, dear. It’s-’

'Don’t.’

'How long were you in there?’ Aziraphale asked as Crowley gulped water from a bowl. He didn’t know if it was just the bowl Aziraphale had been using to soak the linen or if he had realized Crowley was too tired to be bothered with drinking like a person. He put his lips to the surface of the water and swallowed, his tongue occasionally making involuntary lapping motions****.

'Don’t know,’ he said, coming up for air, 'when did the brother of the Count of Flanders…’ Crowley frowned. 'Why was it the brother of the count? Why didn’t he do it himself? I was so convinced that I had…’ he trailed off.

'That you had what?’

But Crowley was bowed over the bowl of water again. After that he rolled over onto his back, retracting his wings. No sense in allowing Aziraphale to muss them any more than he had already. He stared up at the ceiling.

’M'sorry I said you were doddering.’

'Crowley, that was seventeen years ago.’

'Was the last thing I said to you.’

Aziraphale shook his head 'The last thing you said to me was that it didn’t make any sense to wait around for something that’s not going to happen.’

Crowley considered this, his exhausted mind somehow associating it with the dovetail joints of the wooden beams above his head. 'Why did you come find me?’

'Edward’s claimed the French crown. Well, not just the crown, you know, but that’s what people say.’

'And you thought it might be my fault?’

'How would it be your fault?’

'I suggested to have the Scottish fleet and some of the French stationed in the channel after I called off part of a crusade.’

'People don’t start wars just because you parked your boats somewhere.’

'They’ve started wars over the best way to break a boiled egg.’

'That’s not true.’

'You know when you take an egg and- D'you remember that time we were having breakfast in Calais-’

'The Count of Flanders was there too.’

'Not the same one. Tenth century. Point is, people are like that, that’s the whole point.’

'Then it doesn’t really matter how it started.’

'People are going to die. Millions of people.’

'You don’t know that.’

'But I do. I feel it.’

'There’s something else at work here. Someone’s raising the stakes.

'You don’t mean-’

Aziraphale nodded.

'A Horseman of the Apocalypse?’

'Horseperson. They’re not all men.’

'Revelations says “he.”’

'I could point you to a half dozen translations of Genesis that say you’re a “she”, my dear.’

'And who says I’m not?’

'The other translators, I suppose.’

'Have you met any of the Riders of Apocalypse?’

'Only Azrael, a couple of times.’

'Does that really even count?’

'Have you?’

'Don’t think so.’

'None of your discorporations have warranted a personal collection?’

'I’m a demon, Aziraphale. I don’t think it works like that.’

 

*mostly empty   
**it wasn’t always the same, but it usually had dark hair   
***no, really   
****this is less weird or difficult than one might think


	9. 1346

Aziraphale and Crowley had just found somewhere to hole up in the aftermath of the Battle of Crécy.

‘The archery thing… I still don’t see how that’s fair.’

‘It’s war. It’s not supposed to be fair. Besides, what’s fairness to you anyway? Shouldn’t you be championing-’ Aziraphale fished around for the opposite of ‘fairness.’

‘Unfairness?’ Crowley offered.

‘Yes, that. Quite.’

‘That’s dull. That’s really dull.’

‘I thought your side was all about breaking the rules.’

‘Who said anything about rules?’

‘I did.’

‘Hmm.’

‘At least it’s quick. In theory.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Would you stop “hmm”ing? It’s not your fault.’

Crowley reached across the table and took the angel’s hand, repressing the urge to say ‘hmm’ a third time. Aziraphale’s nails had been manicured since the days of the earliest Pharaohs, about five hundred years from the Beginning. He also, if the the lack of ink stains were anything to go by, had recently started using a pen with an ink reservoir. It had only taken him about four hundred years. Crowley would really have to start being more vocal about human technological innovations.

‘Doesn’t one of the Riders have a bow?’

Aziraphale nodded. ‘Conquest.’

‘How’s that different from War?’

‘Gets people to conquer stuff, I suppose.’

‘I imagine that’s the prerogative of War.’

‘Sometimes, ostensibly, but I think War is more about… Conflict. Petty infighting and suchlike.’

‘Whereas Conquest is about the glory of a nation?’ Crowley said sarcastically.

The angel shrugged. ‘I don’t know any more about this than you do.’

‘But if there are Horsemen abroad-‘

’Surely they would have told us if something had been planned for this century…’

‘Aziraphale, remind me again how many times you had to try before you could get through to Metaton last month?’

‘Well, I figured that maybe the candles-’

A roll of thunder clapped loudly and much too close, like a cannon going off in slow motion.

Crowley glanced at the slit window cut into the deep wall. The sky outside, already a pale grey, was darkening. ‘It’s definitely not the candles.’

Aziraphale pushed his chair back from the table. ‘I’m going to do something.’

‘What?’


	10. 1347

The plague had made landfall in Italy.

Aziraphale, of course, had decided to ignore Crowley’s protestations that he, Aziraphale, ‘wasn’t a cherub anymore.’

He was going to find out what was going on. If Heaven wasn’t going to tell him, he could figure it out himself. He didn’t know exactly what that would entail, but he was determined to try. He’d heard Crowley muttering something about ‘allegorical poems’ when he had expressed his intentions to him. Crowley had been muttering derisively, but that was where Aziraphale had decided to start.

He locked himself in the library, much to the dismay of the other monks, as evidently it was ‘their library too.’ He’d see about that. It may involve taking his books and finding some entirely different place to live and means of storing them. The monks mysteriously forgot about the library over the next several hours as Aziraphale pulled dusty volumes down from the shelves.

There had been many earlier threats of Apocalypse, or at least declamations that the End Times were approaching. The most recent had been around the beginning of the century, and before that around the year one-thousand. There had been a faction in England more or less convinced in the 1310s that the famine was punishment for the misdeeds of the king. Aziraphale knew that wasn’t true. Edward may have been partially responsible for the wars that followed, but perhaps that wasn’t all there was to it. Crowley had said he thought he had felt another presence when they were lying under the hedge, but the horse had rattled him*, so he couldn’t be sure.

That had been a civil war. Perhaps it had been egged on by divine intervention? It didn’t seem like it needed to be, but maybe the Horsepersons were drawn to pre-existing suffering.

Aziraphale glanced over at an illustrated bible from 1315 lying on the other side of the table, and without reaching across, or standing up, slid it closer across the polished tabletop. The book opened itself to revelations.

Aziraphale didn’t like illustrations. They always got something wrong. In this image Death was wingless and Famine was a woman dressed in grey. Aziraphale wasn’t personally acquainted with Famine, but he was sure she wouldn’t wear that kind of hat.

He especially tried to avoid illustrations of Genesis. Some of them came alarmingly close to the truth. The expression of reluctance and confusion on his painted face. Crawly twined around a tree trunk. The serpent had actually done that, and nearly passed out afterwards.

None of this was particularly helpful.

Aziraphale had recently gotten his hands on a new, unfinished allegorical poem. He opened it carefully. It was an original manuscript, not yet copied out by scribes.

It was relevant, he could tell that much already. He briefly considered conjuring a mug of hot cider or mulled wine, but soon forgot about it.

A shiver went down his spine as he read of an angel instructing a ruler, the angel scorned. A cycle of rebellion and counter-rebellion, regents and child-kings. Warnings of wicked wiles and the story of the Fall**.

Wonderwise thei fellen- Somme in eyr, somme in erthe, somme in helle depe

There was a woman dressed all in red courting Conscience and Falsehood, sins seeking absolution, Famine making threats, a well executed defense of scholarship and defense from scholarship, a search for Christ, a vision of the Fall of Man, and finally the coming of the Antichrist, Old Age, Death, Pestilence. It concluded with awaking from one of many dreams.

What struck Aziraphale, besides being caught up in the feeling of the language, as he tended to be, was the confrontation towards the end. Old Age wasn’t a Horseperson any more than Scrofula was, but if a person could hold off a personified force like that by making a choice, there was no reason an angel couldn’t.

He returned the manuscript to the bag tied to his belt and got up to unlock the doors.

 

*he insists he’s never been a rattlesnake  
**nine days was the official estimate for how long it took, it wasn’t until the last few minutes that they were anywhere near terminal velocity


	11. 1349

Chapter Eleven. 1349.

Annus horribilis: A year notable for great adversary or misfortune. A disastrous year.

Jean Froissart had compared it to the biblical plague, saying a third of the population had died. In London this was an understatement. By nearly two-hundred and fifty percent.

Crowley was doing the only thing he could think of, which, fortunately for his career, fell under the category of ‘engendering sin.’

Some people had taken it into their heads that the plague was a punishment sent by God for their misdeeds. There had been two major responses to this, the self-punishing and the hedonistic. The theory behind the second one was that it would drive supernatural forces to collect them sooner, making their end more swift. Either that or they just wanted to enjoy their last moments on Earth. Crowley was going with the latter.

It certainly wasn’t doing anything to prevent the spread of disease, but there wasn’t much he could do about that anyway. People were prompted to indulge freely in lust or gluttony or material luxury, knowing they only had a few weeks or days left on the planet.

It was still incredibly bleak. Londoners were dropping like flies*, and flies were to be found by the millions. It had gotten to the point where there were not enough labourers left to clear the bodies and refuse from the street. They king had made a complaint about it to the town council and been informed that the street cleaners in their employ were no longer among the living.

They had quickly run out of space to bury the dead. Corpses had been thrown into mass graves, piled on top of each other in layers. Like lasagne, they had said in Florence. It made Crowley’s stomach turn.

Then they had switched over to burning the bodies.

It was probably a good sanitation measure. It reduced the number of stiffs rotting out it the open, and it probably destroyed whatever was spreading the disease. But it was eerie, watching the flames go up. Consuming flesh and bone, smoke climbing to meet the grey sky.

It looked too much like another fire. One that never stopped burning.

Of course people had started turning against each other, looking for scapegoats. Crowley prayed to no one in particular that there was no celestial or infernal influence behind that.

At least he knew what Hastur was up to, which was, in Crowley’s opinion, a particularly uninspired and malicious version of the exact same thing he was doing.

Every couple decades Crowley received specific instruction to stay away from Westminster Palace, something to do with ‘obligation of a principality… fate of the region… remember what happened last time, Crowley… Crowley… are you even listening to what I’m saying to you… etc.’

There were certainly times when it seemed like the Arrangement was as founded on mutual disinterest in what the other was doing than anything else. But the fact remained that things rarely went well for the demon in that part of Westminster.

Edward was gone, of course, he and most of those could afford to had fled the city, but the palace wasn’t empty. That would be no help to Crowley, however, as if anything, the guards were entirely ignoring the fighting that had broken out in the streets.

Crowley was not good at lurking. He wasn’t particularly good at being the center of attention either, but it was much better than lurking. It wasn’t long before they noticed the dark shadow standing in the alley, hood pulled low over long tangled hair. It wasn’t long before they noticed the wide, slit-pupiled eyes.

'Yellow-eyed fiend! Cacodemon! Spawn of Hell!’

Crowley smiled despite himself. It was better than 'Changeling’ at any rate, and no one was going to recognize him as one of the Fallen with his wings hidden.

The lips of the man at the edge of the road were curled back back in a snarl.

'Plague bringer!’ he spat.

'Well now, let’s not be-’ Crowley began. In an instant he was on the ground, not sure how anyone had come up behind him.

'This is an extremely inelegant means of exorcism,’ he said, looking up at his attackers.

'Not everyone speaks Latin, thou beast of infernality.’

Crowley wrinkled his nose, 'If you’re going to “thou” me, please don’t use noun constructions like that.’

'Whatever, demon.’

Suddenly there were flames everywhere. Crowley was vaguely aware that he had been lift off the ground and thrown. The impact had been with a pile of charred wood which crumbled and gave way to the embers beneath.

It took a moment for the pain to register. He curled into a crouch, minimizing the surface area touching the ground. The hot embers soon burned through the shoe soles he had tied to the bottom of his feet. His feet themselves, the snaky appendages bizarrely fused to scale-covered bony mammalian ankles, were not particularly sensitive to pain. Usually he was careful, but this time he knew they were burning.

He had to remember not to breathe. There was fire all around and the smoke was choking. He knew his lungs weren’t really demanding air, and that this simple effort shouldn’t have required as much thought as it did, but it was uncomfortable and he could feel the cardiovascular muscle in the left of his chest- he would not deign to call it a heart- beating bird-like and panicky against his ribs.

If you saw him then, in a spot of low flame in the midst of a blaze that stretched nearly from one side of the street to the other, the half charred dead visible through the smoke, you would have seen a demon about to make a decision. Wool hood thrown back, firelight reflected in tangled silky locks, round yellow eyes gleaming red with smoke and effort.

There wasn’t much he could do. Even if he could mostly keep himself from burning here, where the flames were low, there was no sign of it relenting, and he had no idea which was the shortest way out of the fire.

It was almost silly, for something that had been around since almost the beginning, that could exist as a subatomic particle or almost a thought, to- albeit temporarily- be deprived of life by something as simple as a conflagration.

But his best bet now was to sever the connection with this corporeal form as soon as possible. The damage had already gone too far.

He trusted the universe to catch his fall. It always had before.

So, like a snake that had been brought in with the firewood, Crowley gave in to the flames. He changed form at the last moment. There was no scream. Only the delicate ashen remains of an arrowhead skull, a long spine and hundreds of ribs.

The next Crowley knew there was a narrow, fleshless skull looking down on him. Connected to a skeleton. Holding a scythe.

HELLO CROWLEY.

'Oh!’ Crowley’s incorporeal mouth gave the equivalent of a smile. 'Azrael! Thank Go- Sa-Azrael! This is an honor. I never thought that-’

IT’S BEEN A BUSY DAY.

Crowley nodded. 'So… Does this mean I get fast tracked on the way back?’

DO YOU WANT TO BE?

'Er. Not particularly.’

NO.

’ ’S a nice horse.’

YES HE IS.

 

*not that flies drop particularly often, Crowley wasn’t too sure why people said that


	12. 1350

Aziraphale had a plan. If the disaster across London was anything to go by, the person of Pestilence should be somewhere in the vicinity.

What Aziraphale didn’t have was a flaming sword, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him. He was an angel and this, this dense habitation tucked against the curves of the Thames, was his city and he wasn’t about to let anyone do this to it. The aura of the place was fading, the bright, chaotic energy of the joy and misery of tens of thousands people being gradually snuffed out. 

It wouldn’t be far now. The angel was on horseback. Angels weren’t supposed to ride horses, and looking at Aziraphale now you could almost see why. He seemed an almost pagan figure, neat curls gleaming softly as he passed from light to shadow under the upper stories that reached out over the muddy cobbled street. A cloak was pinned over one shoulder. It had been months since he looked much like a monk.

The horse’s hooves struck the cobbles, although you wouldn’t know they were cobblestones from the sound of it. Unshod hooves and the thick layers of dust and mud that had washed over the road muffled the sound of his progress. 

He approached the centre of the city, going under an archway in the ancient walls. Something dark passed in front of the sun and Aziraphale thought he saw a stream of rats following the gutter along the edge of the street. At first it was just one or two, but then it seemed to be hundreds, treading over one another, all pouring in the same direction. They were small, only a couple inches in length and every one of them was flea-bitten. 

Aziraphale wasn’t sure what he expected. There was a pale young man dressed all in white with colourless hair that fell past his shoulders. He sat atop a white horse with milky pupilless eyes and smiled down at the rats.

‘Isn’t it beautiful? The way everything holds the seeds of its own destruction?’

‘Not everything. No.’ Aziraphale pulled on the reins, halting his mount a dozen paces from the other rider.

There was a longbow slung over the Horseman’s back and the angel had a vivid recollection of Crowley going down at the battle of Falkirk amid ranks of pikemen in leather armour, Cervelliere helmet askew. It had been too big for him anyway.

The seething sea of rats that now covered the square was making Aziraphale’s horse skittish. He would have to talk quickly or face the consequences of the animal bolting.

‘Upon what provocation- Upon what grounds have you decided to lay waste to this city? To this continent?’

Pestilence laughed, a chilling, hollow sound that seemed to echo beyond the rooftops. ‘What provocation is needed, mon ange? They’re humans!’

‘You know the rules. You’re not supposed to be here. Not like this, not yet.’

‘And you would know that how? Keeping you well-informed are they? Up to the minute?’

‘You’ve already gone further than you’re meant to. You will leave this place. Put an end to what you’ve started.’

‘Oh, will I now?’ Pestilence turned in the saddle, unslung his bow, notched an arrow and drew back the string, aiming directly across the square.


	13. 1350 (cont.)

The tide had turned. The streets were emptier than they had been, but for those left alive, life went on. Construction and reconstruction had resumed on building projects. London was coming back to life.

Whether frost or fire had staunched the flood of disaster, no one knew. That is to say, almost no one.

Two people, or at least person-shaped-beings were sharing a room just north of the City of Westminster. One looked like death and the other was dying.

‘Are you sure you’re not overreacting?’ Aziraphale said, striving for a conversational tone, but Crowley could hear the hoarseness around the edges.

Crowley was kneeling at the edge of the straw mattress. He had refused to move from Aziraphale’s side since he had found him four days earlier. The demon’s wings were unfurled in a speckled canopy.

‘I’m not leaving and I’m not letting you leave.’ He tore another feather from his own plumage and drove the sharp end into one of the buboes in the angel’s skin, carefully draining the fluid.

‘You don’t know that’s going to work.’

‘Do you want to be stuck Up There again for six months?’

‘I’ll be back.’

‘They’re not good to you are they? They treat you horribly?’

‘You’re from Hell.’

‘I know.’

‘Hurts.’ The angel squeezed his eyes shut and fell silent.

Crowley leaned over and softly kissed Aziraphale’s forehead, making a low, wounded hissing sound in the back of his throat.

Aziraphale felt hot tears fall onto his face as his breathing grew more painful and ragged. It wouldn’t be long now.


	14. 1366

‘Do you suppose he has subordinates?’ Crowley asked, resisting the urge to pull Aziraphale’s new, looser curls.

‘Pestilence?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not everything is the result of supernatural forces.’

Crowley frowned. ‘I thought the general notion was that everything sort of is.’

‘Not directly, is what I meant.’

‘They’ve come to a truce in France.’

‘Won’t last.’

‘Why not?’

‘You’ve met Edward of Woodstock?’

‘Can’t they come up with more than one name? Like… Not-Edward? I’m-an-English-prince-and-my-name-is-something-other-than-Edward.’

‘He’s named his son Edward too.’

‘Wouldn’t that be’ -Crowley counted on his fingers- ‘Edward five?’

‘Forbearing accidents.’

‘Unless you count before sixty-six… Er, 1066. Then it’s eight Edwards.’

‘It makes it easier to remember, don’t you think? Have a good chance of getting the name right at any rate.’

‘I don’t think that’s the point.’

Aziraphale looked up at the thin clouds that stretched across the sky. ‘The new plague’s killing young boys,’ he said, abruptly returning to their original topic of conversation.

Crowley squinted at him. ‘What do they do to you Up There that leaves you a pessimist for a decade and a half?’

‘Do you remember Egypt?’

‘I thought you said-’

‘I know what I said.’


	15. 1377

‘What’s that?’ Aziraphale pointed at the velvet object in the demon’s hands

‘A shoe.’

'Let me see-’

'It’s too small for you.’

'You don’t wear shoes.’

A brief scuffle ensued, ending with the demon and angel rather more intertwined than they had intended.

'Can I have that back?’ queried a high, clear voice belonging to a young boy that had somehow crossed the green unnoticed. He was tall for a child, but clearly no more than ten years old.

Aziraphale released Crowley from his wrestling hold and the demon triumphantly crammed his left foot into the antique velvet shoe.

'Really, my dear?’ Aziraphale muttered under his breath.

'I kind of need it back.’

'Too bad. I’m keeping it. You’ve got a perfectly good pair of shoes right there.’ He nodded at the boy’s feet, which were clad in a pair of neat leather boots. 'What do you need this one for?’

'Crowley,’ Aziraphale whispered warningly.

'Well, ’s not exactly a good omen, is it? Losing a piece of the regalia?’

'But you haven’t lost it, have you? It’s right here and I’m keeping it.’

'I don’t think it works like that.’

'Well, tell you what, there’s a place in France- Lovely, does excellent work with beaded pearls- These ones are a getting bit decrepit anyway.’

The boy frowned. 'No they’re not.’ He was right. The frayed velvet and threadbare patches on the shoe seemed somehow to have healed, the intricate beading clashing with the scales of Crowley’s ankles. 'An’ we’re at war with France.’

The child turned to look at Aziraphale, blue-grey eyes unsettlingly direct in his small round face. 'Did you like the golden angel yesterday?’

'The automaton?’

'Aye.’

'Did you like it, your grace?’

'It didn’t curtsey like you do.’

'That’s difficult to do with gears, your grace.’

The young king looked up at the palace thoughtfully. 'I have to go now.’

'Well,’ Crowley shrugged when he was gone, 'he’s not called Edward.’

'You’re the worst.’

'Thank you.’


	16. 1381

‘I thought you were all about revolts,’ Aziraphale said as evening was closing in over the Thames.

‘I’m not about people being forced to renege their promises when they haven’t got a say in the matter. It’s inelegant and it doesn’t even count.’

‘Didn’t turn out too badly, for now at least.’

‘Need to get out of Europe,’ Crowley decided, shivering in the wind that blew off the river ‘go somewhere else for a while. Just for a change of pace. Can’t deal with any more of this.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘Why not?’

‘You know why not.’

‘You’ve done it before when there’s been stuff happening.’

‘There’s always stuff happening. For now I have to stay here and hold the line, at least until things calm down. It’s my duty as a principality.’

‘But you don’t know that for sure, do you?’

‘Look, you can leave if you need to, Crowley. I won’t hold it against you.’

‘They have moveable type on the printing press in Korea now.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Bronze and ceramic.’

‘Crowley I-‘

‘Besides, the king kept his head today, literally and metaphorically.’

‘I can’t just-’

‘And in China they’ve started doing colour printing.’

‘You’re not going to tempt me.’

‘Aren’t I?’

‘No.’

‘But what good does it do to stay here? How can you tell?’

‘I just can.’

‘Alright.’

Crowley wrapped his arms around Aziraphale, like the world around them might just crumble into dust, fingers spread on his back, head declined to rest against his shoulder.

The angel was warm and substantial. Even in his ordinary human form, the thrum of heavenly power was never far away. So different from most of what Crowley surrounded himself with.

Crowley was always softer than Aziraphale expected. The demon looked like he should be all bones and hard angles, but despite his clammy skin and the tension in his movements, he felt more like down than glass. His touch was light and ephemeral, like fleeting moments were fragile things. 

It almost frightened Aziraphale.

‘Bye then,’ the demon said briefly, before heading down the dock to catch a ferry that would take him down the Thames out to the sea.


	17. 1400-1401

‘Long voyage?’ Crowley shifted his position leaning against the railing so Aziraphale could stand beside him.

’Too long. What’s happening here?’

’Water comes up from an underground cave. Limestone. Stays the same temperature all year round.’

‘I meant in the city.’

‘Ah. Jinan’s been under siege for the past couple months. Having a civil war. The emperor tried to take military power away from the princes so his uncle is leading a rebellion.’

‘No rest for the wicked then?’

Crowley licked the corner of his mouth and stared at the water bubbling up in the center of the spring. ‘That’s not funny.’

‘Which way do you think it will go?’

‘The government’s cut off the rebels’ supply line.’

‘So a double siege?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Henry of Derby is king in England now.’

‘Derby?’

‘John of Gaunt’s boy.’

‘Ah.’

‘Henry IV.’

‘So no more Edwards?’

‘Well, I don’t think we can rule that out entirely.’

—

Aziraphale looked down the crowded street. ‘I know it won’t be the end of the century here for a few more years-’

‘They changed the calendar again.’

‘I saw.’

‘I wish there weren’t so many fireworks, it makes me jumpy.’

‘I think it’s nice, it has a sense of… conclusiveness.’

‘Conclusive of what? Nothing’s ended.’

‘Many things have ended, just not all at once.’


End file.
